


Thoughts Hanging By a Thread

by arisanite



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Accidents, Confessions, Conversations, F/M, Gen, Near Death Experiences, Regret, Shared Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Surprise Ending, Unexpected Plot Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arisanite/pseuds/arisanite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Close to death and plummeting to space, the Doctor and Clara hold on to an extended piece of desiccated engineered-tubing. With the Doctor dropping his Sonic Screwdriver and the TARDIS left within the crumbling space station they were supposed to destroy, the two reflect on their lives and what they could have done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts Hanging By a Thread

How they got there, she doesn’t remember anymore.

The last thing she clearly remembered was how he managed to successfully convinced her to visit this floating fortress, the Grand Cassus Castrum that hovered about the Shining System of Andrometrius… that once housed the most infamous and most flamboyant villains of the entire galaxy. He may even have mentioned a title called “Master”, but she tried asking if _he_ was ever incarcerated in it – he didn’t answer at all. But even though how much she wanted to visit that Purple Planet in the Aurarius Galaxy, that one beautiful planet _he_ bragged about that was covered with purple wheat fields and blue forests… he just had to drop that trip when he got the distress call from what was supposedly abandoned fortress.

“ _Won’t take a while_ ,” he said. “ _We’ll see what’s going on and pop back in the TARDIS_.”

Three hours and two days later, they had a run-in with Cybermen who were hiding in the supposedly abandoned fortress, taking hostage a small group of humans and Gataloids… blue-skinned humanoid creatures with tendrils attached to the back of their heads.

“ _I’ll get us out of here_ ,” he said. “ _Things are just simple, all we need to do is hide_ ,” he said.

It didn’t help at all when there turned out to be several strings of Vashta Nerada hiding within the deep and unused control room that has been locked and bolted for almost half a century now. Thanks to his brilliant plan of messing with the last working teleport pod that only had one go (accommodating only five people – including the only five humans and Gataloids left in their hostage team), he managed to have those pesky tin-foil “Upgrade!” aliens reduced to nothing but Vashta Nerada fodder, and have the civilians transported in the Sechael Port, about three light years away – the closest trace of civilization with military protection in that part of the galaxy.

But just when they were about to teleport the TARDIS to their aid… a Cyberman arm managed to escape the darkness have reactivated the teleport pod and collapsed the entire hangar – having the invisible Nerada unhinge the hangar, break down the entire floor… leaving it plummeting down the burning planet of Andrometrius…

If it wasn’t for the lights of the galaxy and the burning flare of Andrometrius, the Doctor and his companion would have been devoured as well… But they held on for their dear life on a floating tubing pod, almost barely connected to the desiccated hangar… that was still teeming with Neradas…

Of course, he tried to fix the tubing pod with his Sonic, probably activate its original adjustable length and get them to safety… But the blasts from what was left of the Cyberman arm sent the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver falling down into nothingness… Probably burned down by the flares of Andrometrius, thanks to its gaseous and fiery state.

“Well, there goes my favourite sonic,” The Doctor mused in horror as he clung hopelessly on the tubing, his arms clasped around the metal tube… as he turned to look at the young woman beside him, face stained with tears as she looked down at the flares of the planet below them.

“I told you we should have gotten on the pod…”

“How many times are we supposed to fight over this, Clara?” He exclaimed, clearly losing it, unable to flail his arms in response as he usually does, seeing that he was holding on to the tube for dear life. “If you got in that pod, you wouldn’t have survived the transfer considering it was only built for five bodies!”

“Who said I wanted to be in that pod?!” she said, tears breaking her voice. “I was intending for _you_ to take that pod!”

“I have the TARDIS!”

He saw her raise her eyebrows with an unimpressed look, still seemingly looking sassy despite the distress on her face. Slumping his shoulders, the Doctor said, “Oh who am I kidding. It’s probably surrounded by Nerada by now…”

Despite the roars of the flares of the planet behind them, the Nerada hissing in the darkness just a few feet above them… the two individuals holding on to their lives on a small scrap of floating metal kept quiet as they contemplated on the situation… and their lives.

“I’m so stupid!”

Clara couldn’t wipe away the tears from her eyes because of her arms tightly wrapped on their last resort of a rescue as she just turned to the Time Lord dangling over empty space beside her. “I can’t believe I dropped that Sonic…” he said miserably. “If only my hands weren’t that feeble, if only they weren’t that clumsy… then maybe…” He sighed. “Then maybe I could have done something to extend this tube…”

“But can’t we just climb back into the hull of the fortress?” Clara asked, looking up.

Squinting, the Doctor tried to crane his neck to get a better view of the dangling metal tube that barely supported their weight. “We could… but the hull has completely collapsed and we have no other way but to walk right into the jaws of that Nerada…”

“Maybe we can send a distress signal?”

“I could have if I had the sonic.”

“You just had to drop it, didn’t you?!” Clara said, gritting her teeth as she looked away, defeated.

“I didn’t mean it!” He harped back, sounding completely hopeless as well.

“You just had to drop it and now we’re trapped!”

“Easy for you to say!” The Doctor shot back, clearly looking distressed than ever. “Oh I am the Great and Mighty Clara Oswald,” he mocked her, causing the girl to turn away in anger. “Clever Clara, Brilliant Clara – what use are you while you kept flirting with that muscled Gataloid?”

“I wasn’t flirting!” she said, upset. “I was comforting him!”

“Yeah yeah,” The Doctor said, rolling his eyes, clearly resorting to insults despite admitting how hopeless the situation was. “That’s what you said.”

Clara didn’t answer back. In fact she sank her face against her leather jacket’s sleeve to stop the Doctor from seeing the fact that she was crying, considering that her life was about to end, as she dangled with this grumpy and irritable Time Lord who was in a state of fury and denial of the point that maybe he can’t be saved… and that his 1200 years are up.

“After all Gataloids don’t have any gender…” he said sarcastically, looking away.

Unable to answer, Clara realized that they were about to die and yet they were busy harping at each other. She wouldn’t say that it had been easy, fine, and dandy between her and the Doctor; but they were pretty much running cold towards each other ever since she announced that she wanted to stay grounded and teach at the Cole Hill School. She knows that he’s not really fond of her co-teacher Tom, but clearly he got even more upset with her decision to keep the job… and one day stop travelling with him.

But now Clara just couldn’t stop the tears from falling as she realized that she will never fulfil that dream of settling down and teaching for good… considering that she was going to die here, in the aftermath of a Space Station accident, in a galaxy so far away from home, a thousand years ahead of her time.

“What happened to us, Doctor?” she said in a voice that croaked of misery. “Why must we fight this way?”

He made that face, that face he always makes when he realizes he’s in the wrong.

And he just won’t admit it.

He still refused to look in her direction as he clenched his jaw, clearly bringing out the fact that he was running out of ideas. Ignoring her pleading gaze, he started tinkering with his bare hands on the reachable controls of the tube, hoping that the buttons on it could lead them somewhere, activate a possible lift, or help send a distress signal… but it too was jammed, destroyed, and was for naught.

“Doctor?”

“If only we could probably drag ourselves up higher and possibly place a hand on that remaining part of the hull –“

“Doctor?!”

“But of course we have no source of light and the Vashta Nerada is waiting for us there –“

“Doctor?! Are you listening?”

“To stay here and dangle to our deaths? Or to climb and run into the Vashta Nerada?”

“Come on –“

“Plummet or be eaten?”

“Doctor…”

“Die or be ea –“

“ **DOCTOR!!!** ”

It was her voice that snapped him back to reality as he saw her dangerously slipping as she released her hold from the tube, just so she could tap him on the shoulder. He stared at her for a few moments, with his bowtie now askew, his coat billowing right behind him as their legs hovered over empty space. She retracted her hand and got a firm grip of the thick metal tubing again as she looked away, clearly shaken by the fact that he was still trying to fight the situation… as he always has.

“It’s no use…” she whispered. “It seems like there is no way…”

“Clara…”

“And I wish we wouldn’t fight or blame ourselves at such a time because it would not help at all! What happened to us, Doctor? We used to be closer than this? We used to solve problems, we used to get past them –“

She saw him wince and she knew she wasn’t getting to her point.

“—but that doesn’t matter. Here we are, close to the end, and we’re still fighting…”

She then looked up at him with those big round brown eyes as she couldn’t stop the tears from falling now, as she looked down at the way Andrometrius burned and turned underneath her… a planet that will continue burning even if she has gone. She looked up at him as he slowly sank into a relapsing devastation, the mighty and victorious Timelord slowly slipping from his grip, slowly accepting his fate…

She leaned on the bar and broke down into tears, sobbing against her sleeved arm.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t much of a help…” she whispered at him, looking at those green eyes slowly growing dark with hopelessness. “I’m sorry Doctor.”

“Clara…”

She suddenly looked up to find him gazing at her in the same manner, as she saw horror and hope fade from his face. It was something terrifying, considering that this is the Doctor speaking. The Doctor who gave her hope despite the darkness he has been in. The Doctor who had forever been searching for hope, and just when he finally found it… it would suddenly be snatched from him. And he could slowly see the light being drained from him…

“My sweet Clara, my brave Clara,” he whispered, straining to hold on the bar as hard as he could with one arm, as he reached out to touch her face. “It is I who should be sorry. I could have saved you. I could have saved us.”

He looked away, not noticing how he shed some tears of his own.

“Forgive me and I must have held you back from your dreams…” he whispered, filled with guilt. “Oh could things have been different if we just visited the Aurarius Galaxy…”

“The Purple Planet,” Clara said, suddenly smiling, as she stopped herself from looking down and seeing her feet dangling over Andometrius and nothingness… “And its purple wheatfields…”

“And Blue Forests,” the Doctor added, a small chuckle escaping him. “It wasn’t aptly named the Purple Planet though. It was actually named Vidispura.” He refused to look at her so that she wouldn’t see how he couldn’t hide his tears anymore. “I thought you would want to know before we die.”

Clara sniffed, not bothering to lift her hand to wipe away her tears.

“What will happen to us?”

Taking a deep sigh, the Doctor looked down and winced. The fires of Andrometrius was beautiful, threading colors of gold, blue, purple, and red alongside with each other, creating a beautiful spectacle in the galaxy. A beautiful yet dangerous spectacle. “We’d probably be taken by the gravity of Andrometrius and we’d burn even before I could say ‘Geronimo’…” He looked at her and looked up. “Either that or we run out of the oxygen the hull is still secreting. Either way we burn.”

Clara bit her lip and closed her eyes when she felt him hold her hand.

“A Viking funeral for the Doctor and his companion?” she whispered.

“Something like that,” he whispered back. “But not that honourable.”

She tried to hide a smile, but as she opened her eyes she found him smiling as well. “And you do know it can’t be a Viking funeral because we don’t have any boats.”

She smiled back at him as she held on tight onto his hands, intertwining her fingers with his. For once in her life she suddenly had fear of death, and yet he arrived and took it away. All in one moment.

“I am honoured to die by your side, Clara Oswald,” he whispered, his voice now breaking. “I would regenerate, but the fires would get to me first.”

Upon hearing those words, she closed her eyes and cried again.

“Since we are to die,” she spoke, her throat hurting with all the ways she tried to stop the tears. “Did you know that Tom proposed?” The Doctor slightly loosened his hold on her hands and looked at her with disbelief. “He wanted to take care of me, that’s what he told me,” she said, gulping. “That we’d spend our days teaching at Coal Hill together. But I just couldn’t say yes…” she whimpered. “I thought about you.” She looked up into those tear-swollen green eyes. “I couldn’t leave _my_ Doctor all alone…”

He then bent his head and buried it in his sleeve.

“Forgive me, Clara,” the Doctor whimpered. “I shouldn’t have taken you. I shouldn’t have insisted on this trip. If only I could have seen this…” He looked up in anguish, cursing the monsters in his head, the Vashta Nerada waiting for them above like vultures, and the fire waiting to eat them from below. “Forgive me for holding you back from a beautiful life ahead of you.”

“No,” Clara exclaimed, tightening her hold on his hand. “Don’t say that. Never say that, never think of that, Doctor.” She sniffled again and gulped, trying to find her words. “My days, my years, and all my travels I spent with you…” she breathed as she found the courage to smile up at him. “Are the greatest days of my life.”

She looked up to see him parting his lips, completely overcome with emotion with what she has just said. Gathering all of his strength, he moved closer to her on the bar, taking a grip of both of her hands as he held her close and kissed her forehead.

“Oh Clara, brave Clara,” he whispered. “This is the first and final time I shall die with a companion.”

He felt her shudder as she whimpered in his arms.

“At least this time I wouldn’t die alone…”

He held her tighter as he tried to shut out all the other sounds and just listened to the sound of her whimpering and sobbing, staining his waistcoat with her tears. “You don’t need to let go,” The Doctor whispered as he held her other hand and unclasped it from the bar. “Just hold on to me and I will be the one to release us from the bar. Are you ready, Clara?”

“I am,” her shaky voice confirmed.

“At three,” he said, gulping. “One…”

All of his lives flashed before his eyes, and Gallifrey… somehow lost and found, his days in it, suddenly filled his mind. He held the small girl in his arms as she affixed one hand on the bar, completely putting the rest of her weight on the Doctor. Comforted by her trust, he closed his eyes.

“Two…”

He didn’t want to see what happened next. All he needed to do was hold her as they fell, hold her as they burned. His time was up, this wasn’t the way he expected things to be. But like all other things, he knows that things have to come to a stop. His memory has to fade, his life has to end. After all he had travelled and ran away from this fate for so long…

“Th –“

“I can’t believe you’re going without me.”

His eyes suddenly shot open and suddenly felt another weight on the bar. The Doctor turned around with Clara still in his arms to see someone also clinging to the bar, someone with a transmitter in their ear and wearing a long dark blue military cloak –

“Captain. Jack. Harkness.”

The man who was deemed to be immortal had one arm clutching the bar as he saluted the Doctor with a free hand, displaying his Vortex Manipulator affixed on a leather arm clasp. “Looking good, Doctor,” he said in that smooth American accent. “Haven’t seen this model of yours yet –“

“How on earth did you get here? How on did you find us–“

Clara has stirred and clasped the bar to look over the Doctor’s shoulder, only to catch a glimpse of the man who was suddenly bring the bar down with his weight. “What’s going on?” she said in a shaky voice, squinting at the man. “Who is –“

Jack suddenly held up his other hand that was holding a very familiar looking bronze and silver screwdriver, with a green-ended tip. “Remember this?” he mused. “This has been retrieved in the future and was marked with the label ‘Andrometrius Time Flare Artifact’. Roughly around 89TC AB. About another thousand years from this…” he peered at his manipulator. “Current date.”

The Doctor squinted. “Did you say Time Flare –“

“You know exactly what it is, Doc.”

The Doctor’s eyes suddenly widened as he looked down at the beautiful flares spewn out by Andrometrius. “It makes sense – it makes perfect sense?”

Clara’s tears were then taken for granted as her curiosity returned as she suddenly asked, “What makes perfect sense?”

“Andrometrius!” The Doctor said excitedly, still refraining from flailing his hands. “It flares – they are Solar Time Flares! If the flare is too powerful, it can manage to transport anything back in time! No wonder the Cybermen hijacked this station and the Vashta Nerada lean close to it – it’s something close to a Time Vortex!”

“Then we could just jump then –“

“No no, sweet girl,” Jack exclaimed, addressing the companion. “You’d still be burned. Especially if the flare isn’t strong enough.”

Clara blinked at him through the lights of the universe reflecting their faces. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

“Captain Jack Harkness, my lady,” he said, winking. “I believe we have met before –“

“I may have seen you through an echo,” she exclaimed, pushing back the Doctor’s agitated face, wondering why he had to be in the middle of all of this. “You did travel with _him_ – You’re the immortal one!”

“Correctly put!” the immortal Time Agent exclaimed. “Miss Clara Oswald.” He winked back at her.

“Oi,” the Doctor snapped back, putting an arm between the two, as the bar wrenched itself down once more with their weight being compressed in one area. “Will you two save this for later? Before this tube completely gives way and kills us all?”

Jack winked at the Doctor, but not before looking him from head to toe. “Feisty regeneration, aren’t we?” He slung his arm around the Doctor and Clara, licking his lips. “Can’t wait to kiss him.”

“Trust me,” Clara said, blinking. “It’s not a likeable experience.”

“Wh –“ the Doctor retorted. “Oi –“

There was suddenly a flash of light that filled the void, before the tubing hanging from the desiccated hangar of the Grand Cassus Castrum finally gave way and fell thousands of feet below, only to be consumed by the fires of Andrometrius.


End file.
